


Caged

by Raindropsonwhiskers



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Wings, Communication, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Wing Grooming, Wingfic, Wings, canon-typical self-hatred, have you gotten the idea that its wings yet?, mentions of Academy Era stuff, mentions of suicide though nothing actually happens, theyre happier and healthier by the end though!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:01:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27626453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raindropsonwhiskers/pseuds/Raindropsonwhiskers
Summary: The Doctor doesn't like small spaces. The Master doesn't like seeing the Doctor hurt (when he wasn't responsible). Neither of them like talking, but somehow they end up doing it anyway.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 71





	Caged

**Author's Note:**

  * For [V_fics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/V_fics/gifts).



> Hello, it's me again with another nearly-midnight-random-AU fic! I had coffee at seven pm and it's eleven thirty now!! I know an insane amount about birds!!! My sleep schedule may be screwed but at least I have something fluffy to show for it. For a given value of fluff. Dedicated to V because they encouraged this like the horrible enabler they are

The cell is small, too small, claustrophobic against wings that cannot spread their full length. She's never liked tight spaces, really, but she's grown to hate them by now. Grey walls marked with desperate tallies press inward on her, ever closer and closer and closer until she can't breathe without tasting the stone-that-isn't-really-stone.

They didn't bother cutting holes for her wings when they made her change into the jumpsuit. She'd torn them herself, with short nails and jagged rips along seams, and it's not comfortable but it's better than the cramping, pins and needles prickling that comes from keeping her wings tucked so close. Not that having them free makes much of a difference in the scant space she has.

She knows that they're dirty and ragged, primaries bent slightly at the edges where she accidentally hits them against the walls. The shimmering blues and greys are dull from a lack of preening — in such a small space, it's hard to do, and she rarely finds the motivation to try — and they itch near-constantly where dead feathers still cling to the skin. They're weak, too, frail from disuse and aching every time she tries to stretch them like a pulled muscle.

She never thought that she'd miss the burnt, dusty red of Gallifrey's ruins, but the closest word for the churning feeling in her stomach is  _ homesick, _ so she must. It's not even that she misses it, but that where she is now is so, so much worse. A hundred years wandering those smoke-filled skies would be better than the hundred she's already spent in this prison.

With dirty, chalk-covered fingers, she reaches over her shoulder to scratch at the itch on the bend of her wing. It won't help for long, but it gives her something to do with her hands, even as her nails — too long, now, and sharper than she thought they were — sting against the sensitive flesh.

Beyond the sturdy metal door, she hears something hit the ground with a  _ clunk. _ One of the guards falling, she thinks, though she can't see. There isn't even a window in the door, nor any handle. Food is teleported in and out at regular intervals, allowing no interaction with the guards or anyone else.

Another  _ clunk, _ closer. She begins to grow somewhat concerned, fingers stilling their scratching and head turning to look at the door. Footsteps, muffled by the metal but loud enough to hear, approach her door. It's not the pattern of the guards, military-precise and droning, but of someone new.

Four knocks against her door, a rhythm she knows inescapably well. Of course he's alive. If she replies in kind, he'll know it's her, and she'll have to face him again. If she stays silent, then she'll rot here, caged and kept and going slowly mad. More so than she already is.

She steps the single pace it takes to get to the door and knocks, one-two-three-four.

The Master's TARDIS is nice, when it's not pretending to be a house. A little on the dramatic side, but that's to be expected from him, really. Mostly, she's just grateful for the space to stretch her wings, even though their atrophied muscles burn from it when she does.

They're somewhere in the Vortex, floating aimlessly, when the Master finally turns away from the console and says some of the first words they've exchanged since Gallifrey. He hadn't spoken when he'd rescued her, hadn't done more than hold his hand out to her and lead her back to his ship.

"Are you alright, Doctor?" he asks.

She laughs, shakes her head, doesn't quite manage words but he understands the point anyways. When the brief, sharp humor of it fades, she shakes her head again. Tests her voice, tries to remember how to talk to someone who isn't herself.

"Why did you rescue me?"

He's quiet. This body of his is  _ never _ quiet, not as himself and not as O, either. Sometimes she wonders how she managed to miss the signs, the way his back had shimmered with the tell-tale mirage heat of a perception filter to hide his wings, the way he seemed just a little too skilled at helping her groom her own that night in the desert. His fingers had been warm and confident and gentle, and she hates herself for not realizing.

"Let's get you some clean clothing," he says after the silence, as though she'd never asked. "And a bath, you're filthy."

She'd protest, but he's right. There's layers upon layers of grime sticking to her skin; why bother bathing prisoners who aren't meant to stay alive for very long?

The bath he leads her to is more of a small pool, already filled with warm, soapy water. It's well-lit, and after the dull lighting of her cell even that stings slightly against her eyes.

"I'll be in the hall if you need anything," the Master tells her. They both know she won't ask for help, though. Not from him, not right now.

He closes the door behind him, and she strips slowly out of her uniform. It tears further along the impromptu wing holes as she tries to get it off, but she can't bring herself to care. The tattered, dirty fabric lands in a ball on the floor, and she steps slowly into the water.

The warmth of it startles her a bit, sending prickling heat through her cold legs. She hadn't even realized that she was cold. Two more steps, and she's up to her waist, the water around her already turning grey and gritty as a century of neglect begins to wash off. When she's submerged up to her shoulders, not even bothering to keep her wings out of the water — it's not as though they're in any state to be used anyhow — she just stands there. Swirls of dirty water spin away from her and disappear, and she wishes everything else would leave so easily.

One hundred years is a long time to contemplate something, even for a Time Lord. If she counts as that, now. Whatever she is, it's a torturously long span of time to think about her past, about her future, about what the Master had shown her in the Matrix. She doesn't want it to be real. She doesn't want any of this. If she could wash her history from her skin the same way she's washing away the dirt, then she would. But it's never that easy.

Dutifully, she goes through the motions of scrubbing her skin clean, of washing her too-long too-ragged hair, of trying to clean her wings and giving up when the angle of the stretch nearly makes her tear up in pain. Then she steps out of the bath, shivering at the cold, and dries herself off. For a moment, she prepares to pull her old jumpsuit back on, but when she looks, it's been replaced by a neatly-folded pile of her old clothes. She wonders why the Master bothered to take them.

After she dresses, she opens the door. True to his word, the Master is in the corridor; a chair back against the opposite wall, some book in his hands, glossy brown wings loosely open. He looks up at her, closes the book, and stands.

"Your wings are a disaster, love," he says. "Would you like me to help?"

She almost says no. She considers saying yes. In the end, she doesn't say anything, but she nods. As much as she wants to hate him, she's too tired to care or fight anymore.  


"Sit down on the floor, then." He points right in front of him, and she's a little surprised that he's okay with her feathers getting all over the floor.

Slowly, half-expecting him to turn this into another stupid power play, she sits with her back facing him, wings flared out as far as she can manage without them hurting. The first time his hands land, far softer than she expected, on her left wing, she flinches and nearly hits him in the face. Even before spending a century in solitary confinement, she never liked being touched in this body. Her companions — stars, she'll have to find them sooner or later — had always meant well, but they didn't understand.

Undeterred by her jumpiness, the Master soothes his hands over the bone of her wing, from where it meets her back to the curve of it. She relaxes slowly into the touch as he runs his fingers through damp and disorganized feathers, smoothing them out. His touch lingers for a moment on one of her coverts, and then she really does hit him with her wing when he  _ yanks. _

"What was that for?" she yelps, whirling around.

Hands up in a sign of harmlessness that she knows is a lie, he shows her the feather. One of the pale blue ones that make up most of her plumage, though it's bent out of shape and dull, more than ready to molt.

"You've got a lot of loose feathers, dear," he says. "This is going to take a while."

She knows that he's right, but it doesn't make things more pleasant. "Just warn me next time before you pull one."

"I will."

He drops the feather to the floor and begins combing his fingers through her wing again, searching for more old growth. Each time, as his fingers tighten around the hollow shaft at the root of a dead feather, he gives her a quick warning before he tugs it loose. It still stings, like a pinprick, but she tries not to hit him again.

Gradually, a pile of stormy feathers begins to form around them. Wings large enough to support a Time Lord are massive, thousands upon thousands of feathers on each, and so many of hers are in need of plucking. She flips one long silver secondary over her fingers idly as the Master works.

"Why did you rescue me?" she asks again, when the silence grows too much like that of a prison cell for her liking. "Why not just leave me there and go conquer the universe?"

"I couldn't," he says, barely audible.

"You didn't have any problem with it before," she points out; not trying to be cruel, but making a point.

His hands still on her wing, fingers unmoving and buried in plumage. "That wasn't what I was trying to do."

"Well, my only choices were killing you or letting you go," she says. "And I- the first one wasn't going to happen."

"Were you too scared to kill us both?" he snaps, voice gone sharp and razor-edged. "Or just not ready to die?"

"I've been ready to die." Before, perhaps, she wouldn't have admitted that. But things are different now. "Just not ready to kill you, too."

Like he had in the console room, he goes quiet; it's a stunned silence, though, not one of avoidance. His hands start moving again, straightening and testing her feathers with careful fingers.

"I'm not going to apologize for what I did to Gallifrey," the Master says, after a minute. He yanks another feather loose, but she doesn't even flinch at the sting anymore. "They all had it coming."

She can't keep the venom out of her tone when she asks, "The children, too? The shobogans who never would have been Time Lords?"

"All of it was built on  _ your _ pain!" he snarls. "None of them deserved to live.  _ I _ don't deserve to live."

His voice breaks slightly on the last word, going soft and painful. Slowly, folding her wing in so as not to hit him, she turns to look at the Master. He's holding one of her feathers so tightly in his fingers that she's almost afraid it's going to snap, and his eyes are welling up with furious tears.

Though it makes her wings ache, stiff from holding one position for so long and stiffer from years of constraint, she folds them around the two of them, cutting off everything except their breathing and the light reflecting off the floor. Perfect togetherness, or at least the illusion of it. Her wingtips brush against his back, and he leans forward slightly until they're almost touching foreheads.

"That's not true," she says. "It's not your fault, and I was lying when I said I was more than you. If anything, I'm less. I don't even know who I am anymore. I don't get to just be another Time Lord."

"Because of what they did to you," he insists. "What they stole from you. Everything that they made was a lie."

"And I don't know if I forgive them for it. But I do forgive you." She pauses, reconsidering her words. "For that, at least. Not sure about the other stuff yet."

That makes him smile, somewhat, and it's better than the abject self-hatred that had been there before. Not that she's innocent of such things either, but hers is a far more subtle loathing and she feels nowhere near ready to bring it up. Even after a century to think about it all, she still doesn't know how she feels, but she does know that, though she may hate him for destroying Gallifrey, she doesn't hate him for why he did it. She doesn't hate him for being made of her stolen genetics; she's almost grateful that they were stolen, because she can't imagine existing in a world without him.

She leans in the little bit to close the distance between them, pressing her forehead to his and letting herself lean against him. They stay like that for a while, feeling the other's thoughts like movement beneath turbulent waters, neither quite willing to break the peace and look deeper. Eventually, though, her wings begin to get sore, and she bursts their private bubble of time by stretching them and stepping back slightly.

"Do you mind getting back to my wings?"

"Of course, dear," the Master replies.

It takes a long time for her feathers to grow back, sharp and hard and prickling at her skin as they push themselves back into place. The primaries and secondaries always hurt the most — they're nearly as long as her arm, and they itch like bug bites the entire time — but even the smaller coverts make her want to claw at her wings until they're whole again and can stop with it all.

The Master helps, distracting her and making her go through the basic flight exercises she remembers from their days at the Academy. They're tedious and she complains, but she knows that she needs to build up the muscle again somehow. So, despite her annoyance, she spends a few hours every artificial day/night cycle standing in his TARDIS' gardens, flapping her wings like an idiot until they're sore.

He reads to her, sometimes, when they're both curled up on a couch somewhere in his TARDIS and not quite touching but for a brush of wing against wing. Whatever he has on hand, usually; poetry and novels and scientific journals alike. It keeps the creeping, oppressive silence at bay, keeps her from feeling like she's back in that cell again. And his voice is soothing to listen to.

They preen each other, often enough to become routine. He'll coax her new feathers into the right place, peeling off the stiff covering when they're ready, and she keeps his deep, rich brown plumage sleek and orderly, just how he likes it. More often than not, that's how she'll fall asleep — the Master's hands smoothing her wings into shape, her head dropping back against his chest and eyes fluttering shut. He'll stay like that, sitting behind her and carefully curling his own wings around them both, until she wakes up again.

She never says that she loves him, but she thinks it sometimes, when she wakes up with her back a little stiff and a canopy of warm, dark feathers above her, his heartbeats in her ears. He never says it either, but he calls her  _ my dear _ and  _ love _ and  _ darling _ with enough meaning that she knows that he does.

Neither of them are really meant for domesticity like this, as they've proven time and time again; somehow, though, they make it work. They're both too tired of fighting, after everything, and willing to work through some things if it means getting their best friend back. Gallifrey, what dwelled in the depths of the Matrix, the Mondasian colony ship. It's slow going, but not much slower than her recovery.

They're in the garden, the Master sitting behind the Doctor on the springy grass with his hands correcting the placement of a few feathers, when he hands her something over her shoulder. It's a transparent casing, long enough to be from a primary feather, tiny bits of silvery fluff clinging to the inside.

"What's this?" she asks, turning her head to look at him. "I mean, I know what it is, but why?"

"It's the last one," he says. "The last important one, at least. I think you've got a few little ones near your shoulder blades left."

It came so much sooner than she'd expected, for all her anticipation. "I'm good to fly again?"

"I wouldn't say  _ good, _ " he makes a face, "given that you fly like you pilot your TARDIS, but-"

She hits him in the face with her wing, gently, and tries to contain her excitement.

"We should go somewhere with mountains," she says. "Zephilur, that's got lovely mountains and those beautiful acid lakes, we should go there!"

"Can we finish this first?" the Master asks, smiling. "I'm not done, and you haven't done mine yet, love."

Scronching her nose at him, the Doctor sighs and extends her wing again. Every part of her wants to go, jump off the top of a mountain and just  _ soar _ until she can't anymore, but they've been working on this, on compromises and patience and restraint. It's been long overdue, really.

The Master finishes his work, then they both turn around so that she can preen his wings. His feathers rarely get too badly out of place, but it's part of the ritual of the thing. Her fingers tug lightly at a few loose-looking coverts, testing to see if they're ready to fall out yet, and when they remain in place she simply straightens them and keeps going. It's comforting, being able to touch him like this without worrying about- well, anything. No fear of him killing someone for her attention, no fear of him trying to kill  _ himself _ — they'd both had some very long talks about their respective suicidal tendencies — and less fear of either of them lashing out than she's had in millennia.

When she finishes his left wing, she leans over his shoulder to press a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth before starting on the right. That, too, is something she finds comfort in; the easy affection that they share, now that they can. Wings rubbing against each other, holding hands, and lots of kissing. An absolutely  _ wonderful _ amount of kissing.

Finally, she's done with both wings, and she stands, bouncing on the balls of her feet and shuffling her wings slightly.

"Zephilur, then?" the Master asks, smiling.

"Whenever you're ready," the Doctor replies, just as happy.

Zephilur is just as pretty as she remembered, from the towering mountains to the brightly colored pools of acid that bubble and spit below the stone.

"Only it's not  _ really _ stone," the Doctor explains, stepping out of the Master's TARDIS — shaped like some of the sparse, woody vegetation brave enough to try to grow here. "'Cause if it were, it'd have dissolved by now, even though the acid is really weak. It's technically all one big lump of metal compounds, and then the runoff from the acidic rain weathered all the stone that used to be around it, until it just left the mountain shapes."

The Master nods and listens obligingly, letting her ramble as they walk up to the peak of the mountain they've landed on. The other side dead-ends into a steep cliff, and thousands of meters below is a large red dot that is, in all actuality, an acid lake nearly a kilometer across. It's only thanks to naturally keen eyesight that they can even make it out in the first place.

Standing at the highest point, boots barely overhanging the cliff's edge, the Doctor shakes out her wings. She's been ready for this for  _ ages _ now, and she wants this first flight to be a good one, so she's thorough in her stretching.

"If you take any longer, dear, I'm going to push you," the Master threatens.

That shouldn't make her laugh, but it does. "You wouldn't."

To her absolute lack of surprise, he does, right between her wings. It's a gentle shove, really, not enough to destabilize her unless she lets it, but it's as good a reason as any to fall. With her wings tucked close for maximum efficiency, the Doctor plummets towards the ground.

Wind rushes past her, roaring in her ears and biting at her face. She watches the ground grow closer, closer, closer, until the acid pool looks uncomfortably close, and then she waits just a second longer than that just because.

For the first heartbeat after she flares her wings, she's almost afraid they won't work and that she'll just fall to her death — not as though it'll be permanent. And then the wind catches in her wings, and her descent levels out, becoming a smooth glide and then a gentle upward swoop as she begins to flap.

It's just as exhilarating as she remembers her first flight at the Academy had been. She'd been young and stupidly confident, and she and Koschei had snuck a short-range teleport from one of the school's mechanics workshops to use for a late-night trip to the mountains. They had climbed up as high as they could, then scaled the tallest tree they could find, and nearly fallen back out when they'd gotten distracted kissing in the highest branches. Then, under the moonslight and the glow of Gallifrey's rings, she had jumped off.

Koschei had been right behind her, and they spent far too long darting between the trees and just soaring through the sky. Looking back, it's a miracle neither of them ended up crashing, but at the time it had been the most perfect night of her life.

Now, in daylight, on a planet so far from the ruins of Gallifrey, on different mountains, in different bodies, the Doctor feels that same thrill. She looks up to see the sky above her empty; the Master must still be standing on the cliff. He's watching her, she's sure of it, so she rides the warm current of air above the acid pool up a few hundred meters and then does a flip, just to show off.

Then she makes her way back up, rising until she's hovering eye to eye with him. It's a little tiring, the constant beating of her wings required for that, but it's good practice.

"You should really join me," she says. "The acid's even better up close."

"And you got awfully close," he replies, lips quirked upward. "Forgot how your own wings worked?"

She grins. "Nah, just wanted to see how low I could go. Bet it's lower than you can get."

It's a blatant ploy to get him to join her, and they both know it. He rises to the challenge anyway.

"You made it, oh, I'd say forty meters from the surface?" Behind him, his wings stretch out to their full span, feathers glinting in the sunlight.

"Closer to thirty-five," she corrects with a scronch, followed by a taunting smirk. "But if it makes you feel better, I'll say forty."

"I can do twenty," he promises, and then steps off the cliff.

She watches him fall for a moment before tucking her wings in and diving to keep up with him. They go lower and lower, and she pulls back a fair bit before he does, just to watch as he spreads his wings and then, like the cheeky bastard he is, swoops a little bit lower before rising back up to meet her.

"It doesn't count after you've opened your wings," she points out.

He smirks. "I still made eighteen."

For a second, the Doctor considers being rational about things, and not pushing the challenge further than it really needs to go. Then she ignores that bit of her, because what's the point of tossing yourself off of a cliff with your best friend if not to try to win?

"Bet I can get five."

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, leave a kudos and/or a comment! Both are appreciated and help fuel other insomnia-inducing spur-of-the-moment fic creations like this one


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